ANATOMY OF TORTURE — Historian Christopher Dietrich on the 100-year-long history of American torture; Jeffrey St. Clair on the implications of giving impunity to the CIA’s torturers; Chris Floyd on how the US has exported torture to its client states around the world. David Macaray on the Paradoxes of Police Unions; Louis Proyect on Slave Rebellions in the Open Seas; Paul Krassner on the Perils of Political Cartooning; Martha Rosenberg on the dangers of Livestock Shot-up with Antibiotics; and Lee Ballinger on Elvis, Race and the Poor South. Plus: Mike Whitney on Greece and the Eurozone and JoAnn Wypijewski on Media Lies that Killed.

On April 20, the Supreme Court issued an 8-1 decision in US v. Stevens invalidating a federal law that was intended to reach "crush videos" and similar materials.
In "crush videos," small animals, such as kittens or mice, are...

Arbil
An Iraqi court has disqualified two members of the country’s newly elected parliament in a move which puts in doubt the outcome of last month’s election and is likely to increase political instability in the country.
The...

Dear President Obama, Senator Schumer and Senator Shelby:
On the eve of the portentous Senate debate over the extent to which the financial industry is to be so as to avert future megacollapses on the backs of taxpayers, workers and consumers, a...

It should no longer be a matter of dispute that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are responsible for an increasing number of murders, whether part of targeted extra-judicial killings or the result of bad intelligence. From the attack on a bridal shower in Garde...

For the first time in their respective political careers, US Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and John McCain (R-AZ) both face uphill battles for re-election this fall. But the issue most likely to decide each man’s fate isn’t the state of ...

For the first time in their respective political careers, US Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and John McCain (R-AZ) both face uphill battles for re-election this fall. But the issue most likely to decide each man’s fate isn’t the state of ...

What’s up with the Mormons? Orem, Utah legislator Stephen Eric Sandstrom last week pledged to follow the lead of “my friend” Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce and expand the number of states with show-me-your-papers bills aim...

Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it actually gets off extremely lightly: that many features of ...

In what may be easily called the understatement of the decade so far, President Obama has characterized an Arizona measure that criminalizes undocumented immigration, just signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, as "misguided." Frankl...

Twenty seven offshore rigs were built along southern California’s coastline in the 1960s. This was the inaugural boom era of deep water ocean drilling. Two key developments ushered it in. The first was a set of advances in mining technologies and...

Many a sad Sarnian chronicle can be told of the Straits of St. Clair, of crosses and double crosses in the urban boundary waters of Port Huron and Sarnia.
Amongst Canadian protectors of the largest lake in the world (Huron/...

Imagine the United States were spending an amount that exceeded 60 percent of its national income on the military and police. (For comparison, the U.S. Department of Defense budget – bloated as it is – is about 5 percent of GDP...

Arbil
The United States is trying to resolve the growing crisis over the formation of a new Iraqi government, with a deal between current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his main rival Iyad Allawi under which each man would hold the post of prime minister ...

More than a hundred activists from the Sheikh Jarrah movement published an open letter to Elie Wiesel in response to the letter Wiesel published last week in US newspapers. Here’s the letter’s full text:
Dear Mr. ...

Many “tea party” activists staunchly oppose big government, except when it is warring, wiretapping, or waterboarding. A movement that started out denouncing government power apparently has no beef with some of the worst abuses of modern times.
...

Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had a lead story about Israeli planning to possibly “go it alone” in an attack on Iran if the US were not to “succeed” in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to “stop” it’...

On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King penned his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in response to criticism about the tactics of the civil rights movement. King had been arrested for non-violently protesting segregationist laws through ...

"A few weeks back, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that they are opened to a dialogue with Cuba but that they clearly want to see fundamental changes in the Cuban regime. It is my obligation to respond to Mrs. Clinton, with all due respect, a...

Marijuana was by no means the first boom crop to delight my home county of Humboldt, here, in Northern California, five hours drive from San Francisco up Route 101. Leaving aside the boom of appropriating land from the Indians, there was the timber boo...

Franz Kafka’s book "The Trial" begins "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." There follow many thousands of words describing the ordeal o...

As the FBI told the story, it happened like this.
On February 24, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, a rancher on that part of the South Dakota steppe that crumbles into the Badlands was looking for a place to run a fence lin...

Scandals distract the public from focusing on key issues. Sometimes, however, they also provide insights into the character of leading cultural and political figures — and their institutions. When the story finally broke — after perhaps centuries of cover...

Before a sold-out crowd of upstanding New Yorkers, including some of the most committed bankers in the world of finance – Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and James Dimon of JP Morgan Chase among them – President Obama asked the audience of...